Directions? I don’t need directions, we have the GPS

And then, the overthinking begins.

While I’ve been a fan of the side blog (the don’t click here posts), I’m starting to think that it’s something I don’t want to share here. Or, rather, I’m starting to think about the content I want to share here.

I’ve already got a solid (and fun!) workflow for these kinds of posts, so I’d like to continue use it to share links and what not. Re-purpose the sideblog here for photos, which would be pretty rad, and keep donburnside.com with the longer format posts and podcasts. Perfect (he says, for this week).

For the link blog, I have something fun planned! I’m going to be re-purposing an old URL for it’s last purpose; as a link blog. This time, instead of setting it up at a service, I’ll keep with my wanting to own my stuff and host it here.

Those of you that aren’t new here might have already guessed. CJ and Paul have guessed. It will be the triumphant return of Wind(the)Frog(dot)Net.

Coming soon to a browser, RSS reader, email client, Fediverse client near you.

The Sunday Post – Thursday Edition

You see, I wrote this on Sunday in my journal. I’ve cleaned it up and am repurposing it here for Sunday’s post, just on Thursday.

Waking up this Sunday morning to a very cool moon that I’m not going to take a photo of and share because I’m still only shooting with my phone. If you want to see crappy phone pictures of the moon, maybe scroll your Facebook feed?

I’m still very blocked on the podcast. I got excited because I had 2 solid episodes ready to go and thought, for sure, I could get ahead and keep it going. To that end, I’ve recorded a bunch of stuff from my bicycle, that I haven’t reviewed, and even have a Hindenburg Journalist Pro file called S02E03.

Here’s the thing. I know I will get it produced. And, I know once I get it produced the rest will come bounding out of me! I’m blocked getting it produced. I’ve had this block before and have no idea what is driving it. I can tell you what it feels like.

It’s the best description I’ve ever heard, and I read it on the internet and I do not remember where or who. You know when you turn on an eletric stove on high and it gets bright red from the heat, and the surface gets really hot? Great, yea, do that, once that is as hot as it can get, place your hand on it. That is the feeling of can’t that I get when I’m blocked.

There is a new phxpodcast.club Podcaster Hotseat that needs to be edited. I’m hoping getting that done helps get me back on track.

Links Manager

WordPress has a really neat feature that you probably did not know existed; a Link Manager. Yep, built in way to keep track of your favorite links, and display them in a widget, pretty much anywhere. Look for the Bookmarks in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page to see mine.

If you want to have this feature returned, you can download the plugin, which is just a single line file that turns the feature on in WordPress. And if you are wondering wtf I’m on about, you can read all about the WordPress Links Manager yourself.

Honestly, you can’t have a blog without a blog roll!

Don’t Click

You might notice a new link that says Don’t Click Here. That’s me just being silly and using some psychology to actually get you to click. Clever, right? Anyway.

I’ve been really trying to own everything when it comes to my content. This is how it used to be, before Twitter, before Meta. We had blogs. We had this brand new, very cool photos sharing site called Flickr, and the two worked together quite nicely. Then we had message boards and podcasts and all was really ok in the technology world. And it was fun.

Like I said, trying to own everything. Which is really cool for me because I get full control over my words and photos when I post them here. It sucks for me because I don’t have an algorithm trying to force my content on unsuspecting users, or users that aren’t interested.

Introducing the Fediverse! It’s nothing that is that new. It has been gaining in traction since Elon ruined bought Twitter. I’m a Mastodon user myself, and I think it’s great. There is no algorithm, so you have to have people and hashtags to follow. Once you do, no ads, no weird content, and tons of control over your own stuff.

And the biggest part of my relaunching of donburnside.com was to make sure it is federated. And it is! You can follow me on the blog at @donburnside@donburnside.com. Sure, it looks funny, but that’s the way the users names look. You get used to it pretty quickly.

I’m very excited to keep going with this and see just how far it goes.

I Have Stopped Using Meta

Just because nobody really understands what that means.

I am no longer using Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Whatsapp or Facebook messenger.

In case you missed it last month.

Meta is making sweeping changes to its content moderation policies, including abandoning third-party fact-checks in favor of X’s crowd-sourced “Community Notes” approach and loosening restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity. Under the updated Hateful Conduct policy, for example, calling gay and trans people “mentally ill” is now allowed, while an explicit ban on referring to women as “household objects” has been removed.

So, that’s pretty neat. No, actually, it’s really fucking gross. I have a lot of friends that this could potentially affect, so let’s call that reason number one as to why I’m not using it.

Moving on to reason , Facebook has been broken for me for about 10 years. I log in, I see the same dozen people whether I want to or not. I have muted them all, and when I do that, I see ads and a lot of error messages. Not only that, but Facebook is very well known to favor content that gets people mad. Most of it is fake news/propaganda generated by the Maga propaganda machine these days I’d wager. Or Russia.

And, for good ol’ number three, let’s hear from [Ev Williams]:(https://ev.medium.com/making-social-social-again-0126fa5c6ce8)

Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their waking hours making “content.” In other words, social media became…media.

It’s the last sentence there. Those sites aren’t social. The main objective of these sites now is to keep you there to drive ad views. Also, since you are going everywhere with your phone, and those apps installed on your phone, you are talking Meta with you. Everywhere. We all can laugh about the talking to your phone to get the correct ad, but that is also pretty fucking gross.

I have only deactivated my accounts for now, since I know I have to use Marketplace soon and I need to go back to Insta and look for Youtube channels and websites of my favorite creators so I can still enjoy them and support them, without doing it through any Meta properties. And I need to get to threads to see if anyone has made the switch to Bluesky, which I am “using” and by using I mean I have an account and I post to it, occasionally.

And let’s add Tick Tok to the list. I’ve never used, really. Not going to start now because everyone is talking about it.

That means I’m also working on sending everyone back to me here, which I’ll have to do an advertising blitz when I activate everything to maybe share a link to this post? I have some more stuff happening here that I am very excited to keep playing with and making better, and that all revolves around federation. Oh no! new word for the blog. Yea, there will be more of that.

Reblog of Don Burnside: Testing something before I write it up.

Ok, seriously, this is turning into something very cool! And now, I’m kind of excited to turn my WordPress install into a full blown federated instance!

Reblog via Don Burnside

Good morning and holy shit!

Did y’all know that with a single WordPress installation, and a few plugins, you can run your own federated instance?

I’m going to have to write this up! Watch for testing between my site and the podcast site!

Hello February!

an image showing phxpodcast.club

Almost halfway through the month. And, wouldn’t you know it, I got sidetracked doing the number one thing I tell all podcasters not to let themselves get caught up doing, because it keeps them from being a podcaster.

I’ve been caught up doing website stuff.

I just finished a brand new site for the PHXPodcast.club. This is a local Podcast group that I’m a part of and we have been doing some neat things that I’m trying to make sure get noticed. Not only is the site up and live, but I even built it using the same template for a podcast that I mentioned during my talk last month.

But with this, and a particularly crazy Instuctional Design project happening at work, my focus has been pulled from podcasting. While I can wear multiple hats, the number of hats that I can wear per day is starting to dwindle, especially if I’m switching between technical and creative tasks.

In fact, I’d love to tell you more about that ID project. It is for a Security Awareness course at work (most ISO certified orgs have to have this for their audits), and you’ve probably taken it. I’ve help make it suck less.

My manager came up with the idea of letting employees have the opportunity of testing out of the main learning. Pass the test, you are good to go. Don’t pass the test, continue on to the remaining hour of training. Oh, and it’s in 3 languages, and I perfectly executed it. It is some of my best work and I’m really proud of how it came out.

It’s these things that keep us from our shows. Keep us from being podcasters.

Writing

Hello.

Now that all of the podcasting stuff is out of the way, because it does seem and feel like this has been turning into a blog about podcasting, which it is not. At one point, it might have seemed like this was a blog about WordPress. Or about Type 2 Diabetes. Or a recipe blog. Or a very personal journal.

Except that it is a blog about all of those things. That is the nice thing about having my own space to write about what I want. I already have focused content sites (WRR and BRR ) and I feel that here, at donburnside.com, that would be boring. I like to talk about what is interesting to me currently. And, I do have a tendacy to go through phases. I also have the tendency to sit down and just start writing, without anything clear direction, just the overwhelming feeling that I want to write.

That was this morning. I woke up, fed the dogs, saw that pre-dawn sky was really great, then the dawn sky exploded in color and light! I went out to enjoy it and came back needing to put words to pixels.